Hello, and welcome to our civic experiment.

We’re just a couple of regular folks – artists, actually – who’ve spent years reflecting on, and tossing around ideas about, the state of the world. Stories we’ve been told and the truths that seem to live in the margins. We decided it was time to do something with all this discourse. So here we are, giving those thoughts and reflections their due – writing them down, giving them shape, and sending them out.

What started as a box of scribbles piled up over many years – on yellow pads, post-its, and cocktail napkins – has become what we now call “The Blue Paper Project”, a little nod to the business world’s white papers, except ours deal in civic imagination and are focused on justice, fairness, and the strengthening of our democracy. A collection of proposals that we hope will be seriously contemplated, and shared in a way to become blueprints for meaningful change.

Could these emerging concepts, perennial problems with their possible solutions get shared widely (and wildly!) enough that they begin to echo? Might they ripple through a group chat, or bounce from brain to brain until they become part of the national conversation (this is messaging!). Maybe GroupOff will reach some mad money or perhaps One Generation drifts into the ether and meets someone else’s spark along the way.

Each Blue Paper has the potential to spark action. Share of course, but maybe send a letter, write an email, call your elected representatives, boycott, buycott. Got something kicking around you want to flesh out? Write us. We’re not a think tank, just a farmer’s market of ideas. 

Our goal is simple: to bring forth original ideas that have little to do with “politics”, but much to do with “policy” – which is to say, whether sanctioned by law or practiced in daily life – a reflection of our values. Maybe some these ideas might help our country come out of this distressing time even better than it was before it got tiny, orange fingerprints all over it. We invite you in. To read. To respond. To share. These blue papers aren’t finished products – they’re seeds. And the more people who help plant them, the better chance we have of growing something that matters.

With love of country, of truth, of people.

– Ellis Pluribus